Heres an idea. Every age units get more HP. For example a regular spearmen from ancient age has 3 HP, a regular pikemen/musketmen has 5 HP, infentry/rifelmen have 7 HP and mech infentry has 9. This goes for all units of each era. Now that way theres more balance and less issue of a 20HP swordsmen beating 8HP tank like in the above system.
possible fix for tank vs. spearman...
- Thread starter brody
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Lt. 'Killer' M.
Deity
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I tripled the fire rate which determines the amount of damage a unit does so the percentage of damage stays right. Otherwise you`d need to hit a veteran unit (now 12 HP instead of 4) 11 times instead of 3 to get it down to 1 HP.
I'd like to do this, but unfortnately, you cannot have different hitpoints by era. Hitpoints can ONLY vary with the experience levels of conscript/regular/veteran/elite.
Too bad. Actually, hit points should, IMO, vary by factors like how hard it is to damage the unit's cpmbat ability (size/mobility/armor or intrinsitc defenive strength) as well as by experience level. This would, of course, cause variations over eras, as those factors evolved.
Unfortntaely, nothing like this is possible with the current editor or game.
To bad.
brody
Pathetic Loser
royfurr: Yeah, it does make sense to have incremental changes (hey, that's how I started!), but one reason I did the changes I did was because I realized one unforeseen consequence was actually quite good. Bombard units can knock a ship down so low that they are as good as dead. If you knock a ship down to 1 HP right now, even an elite has a small chance of being destroyed, or at least hurt badly - each "bad roll" is 20% of an elite ship's HPs! In my system, that ship at 1 HP has almost no chance even against a conscript ship (8 HP)! And if a few rolls go by that damage the attacker, it's still barely gonna scratch him at veteran/elite (16/20HP). That's one of the reasons I can't go back to just minimal changes 
Another unforeseen consequence is that your units heal more HP, though it's the same percentage. Instead of 1 HP per "rest" turn, it's now 4. That's good, because otherwise you could be waiting 19 years to heal an elite tank
One bad thing that comes of this, though, is that bombard units can destroy terrain improvements almost every time they try, and it also seems much easier to hit cities as well... I guess a lot of people complained that it was too hard to hit cities, so some may like that aspect, but I may modify city bombard defense or something to change it...
I certainly like your ideas though, and I will eventually change the attack and defense of my units to reflect their era... and I really think it would be great to be able to modify HP per era. Even if it were just a "age modifier" bonus, where all units of a particular era had a HP modifier. That would be great! Ancient = 100%, Middle = 150%, Industrial = 200%, Modern = 300%. That right there would practically be my system but set up to where an elite warrior (5 HP) could almost NEVER take even a conscript modern armor (at 300% that'd be 6HP compared to 2HP today).
Another unforeseen consequence is that your units heal more HP, though it's the same percentage. Instead of 1 HP per "rest" turn, it's now 4. That's good, because otherwise you could be waiting 19 years to heal an elite tank
One bad thing that comes of this, though, is that bombard units can destroy terrain improvements almost every time they try, and it also seems much easier to hit cities as well... I guess a lot of people complained that it was too hard to hit cities, so some may like that aspect, but I may modify city bombard defense or something to change it...
I certainly like your ideas though, and I will eventually change the attack and defense of my units to reflect their era... and I really think it would be great to be able to modify HP per era. Even if it were just a "age modifier" bonus, where all units of a particular era had a HP modifier. That would be great! Ancient = 100%, Middle = 150%, Industrial = 200%, Modern = 300%. That right there would practically be my system but set up to where an elite warrior (5 HP) could almost NEVER take even a conscript modern armor (at 300% that'd be 6HP compared to 2HP today).
Brody,
You ought to consider the "zero range" bombardment strength for ranged (ie the firepower but currently NON arty units), it helps on defense without other consequences.
Your system may make bombardment units TOO powerful against ships. Historically land arty units sank VERY few ships, but of course aircraft were very deadly indeed. However, they too SEVERE casulitites doing it! Loss rates often were in the 30 -60 % range, or higher, although they could be low. In most of the carrier battles in the pacific, after 3 rounds of attacks, most carriers could barely mount another attack, and could hardly generate a defensive fighter CAP over their fleet. Ususally by then of course the primary targets had been sunk or severely damaged.
The bravery of the aircrew involved, on both sides, is simply incredeble. Truely awesome.
Back to the matter at hand. It may be great for the bombardment attacker that they have devastiated the ships, but if there have NOT been any attacker casualties in the bombardment units, this will unbalance things. Thats why I would like to see it possible for bombardment units that are aircraft receive damage while attacking. I certainly don't want to make them capable of wasting ships AND not take losses. That is most ahistorical. And land bombardment units simply had very little effect against ships (I am talking in the modern era here, btw). Coastal fortresses in medieval and very early industrial had signigficantly more effect on wooden vessels then did modern guns against steel armoured ships.
It IS too bad that Hit point values cannot be varied in ways other then just experience.
Oh well.
Civ on.
You ought to consider the "zero range" bombardment strength for ranged (ie the firepower but currently NON arty units), it helps on defense without other consequences.
Your system may make bombardment units TOO powerful against ships. Historically land arty units sank VERY few ships, but of course aircraft were very deadly indeed. However, they too SEVERE casulitites doing it! Loss rates often were in the 30 -60 % range, or higher, although they could be low. In most of the carrier battles in the pacific, after 3 rounds of attacks, most carriers could barely mount another attack, and could hardly generate a defensive fighter CAP over their fleet. Ususally by then of course the primary targets had been sunk or severely damaged.
The bravery of the aircrew involved, on both sides, is simply incredeble. Truely awesome.
Back to the matter at hand. It may be great for the bombardment attacker that they have devastiated the ships, but if there have NOT been any attacker casualties in the bombardment units, this will unbalance things. Thats why I would like to see it possible for bombardment units that are aircraft receive damage while attacking. I certainly don't want to make them capable of wasting ships AND not take losses. That is most ahistorical. And land bombardment units simply had very little effect against ships (I am talking in the modern era here, btw). Coastal fortresses in medieval and very early industrial had signigficantly more effect on wooden vessels then did modern guns against steel armoured ships.
It IS too bad that Hit point values cannot be varied in ways other then just experience.
Oh well.
Civ on.
Grey Knight
Old hacker
I was of the mind to try and update the base values to try and even things out (I have already bumped the unit hitpoint values), and went to the combat calculator to play with some numbers. I was rather shocked to see that the biggest factor is the health of the combatants! For example, a 4hp warrior has a 35% chance of killing an 8hp tank! Conversly, a 1hp tank only has a 77% chance of killing a 4hp warrior!
Since combat is resolved round-by-round, even if the odds for a particular round are not in your favor you only need to get "lucky enough" often enough to win. You are actually better off attacking with two veteran horsemen (57.6%) than one veteran knight (54.3%), since the horses have 8 chances, whereas the knight only has 4. This is what makes armies so powerful - having 12 rounds to do damage means I only have to win more than 1/3rd! Imagine a knight army - even mech inf only has a 59% chance of attacking it and winning!
Aside from doing really strange things to the HP settings, (i.e. conscript and regulars have 2, vet & elite have 3), I don't know how to get this combat model to produce sane results. It does make for easy AI programming - make lots of units! The only shortfall right now is that it can be baited into throwing it's units lost causes (foritfied on a mountain, sending in units 1-2 at a time).
I know this -- I'm more likely to use larger stacks, and more willing to use inferiour units now! Warrior rushes anyone?
Cheers,
Shawn
Since combat is resolved round-by-round, even if the odds for a particular round are not in your favor you only need to get "lucky enough" often enough to win. You are actually better off attacking with two veteran horsemen (57.6%) than one veteran knight (54.3%), since the horses have 8 chances, whereas the knight only has 4. This is what makes armies so powerful - having 12 rounds to do damage means I only have to win more than 1/3rd! Imagine a knight army - even mech inf only has a 59% chance of attacking it and winning!
Aside from doing really strange things to the HP settings, (i.e. conscript and regulars have 2, vet & elite have 3), I don't know how to get this combat model to produce sane results. It does make for easy AI programming - make lots of units! The only shortfall right now is that it can be baited into throwing it's units lost causes (foritfied on a mountain, sending in units 1-2 at a time).
I know this -- I'm more likely to use larger stacks, and more willing to use inferiour units now! Warrior rushes anyone?
Cheers,
Shawn
Lt. 'Killer' M.
Deity
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Jaguar Warrior rushes - YES! Works wonderfully - but only after trippling.
I sometimes watch Warriors loose 15 fights in a row against warriors in woods - should be more like 1:1,3 but actually the "stringyness" of the RNG makes it sometimes 20:1, then 1: 15. I`m sure it evens out if you play enough games, but I guess humans tend to use advantages they see, tend to use top line troops, tend to "make reasonably sure" - and that simply isn`t possible with CivIII
I also started using lots of units instead of quality troops. Helps, sometimes, but still the luck factor is unreasonable. Like when the AI 50 times attacks my Rifleman with a Cossack and never wins, but the turn before my reinforcements arrive it wins 6 times in a row - gone is the beachhead.....
Grey Knight
Old hacker
Actually, what I was saying is that the lower the hitpoints, the less predictable your results will be. So JW rush fans will like low HP.
Retreat makes this even worse. It's like saying you'll play russian roulette, but you'll only pull the trigger once (and make me pull he other 5 times)...
Shawn
Lt. 'Killer' M.
Deity
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With original Hp it was horrible. Someitmes a single warrior attacked, won, was counterattacked and survived, attacked again the next turn and took the city. Other times I lost 20 warriors on a single spearman.....
I love the retreat - after all I make sure I have the fast units
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